


fly

by BlackSclera



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Kinda BAMF Tsuna, Reborn is the Strongest Spiker, his leg power is insane, iemitsu raises tsuna as a basketball prodigy, instead of "fly", their motto is "Burn", tsuna comes to hate it bec of him, tsuna jumps rly rly high, volleyball!au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:46:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24144598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackSclera/pseuds/BlackSclera
Summary: The first time Tsunayoshi sees Iemitsu on television is when he is six years old.He is wearing his team’s basketball uniform, the number of the ace boldly emblazoned on his front and back. Around his neck hung several medals, all of which gleamed gold under the camera’s flashes.“I heard that you plan on having your son continue your legacy as the ace of CEDEF, Iemitsu-san. Is this true?”the reporter asks.Iemitsu boisterously laughs.“Yes,”he says without hesitation.“I expect him to take after his papa when he grows up.”Tsunayoshi looks at the basketball in his hands. It’s too big and too heavy for his age, evidenced by the gauze wrapped around his tiny fingers and the bruises on his skin, but it is a familiar weight after everything his father’s personal trainer has put him through.But what if I don’t want to be like you?
Comments: 4
Kudos: 51





	1. Chapter 1

Everything in Sawada Tsunayoshi’s life is dictated by basketball. From his school of choice to the people he chose himself to involve with, everything came back to basketball.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Tsunayoshi is a prodigy in the sport. He's as talented as his father - if not even _better_ \- and the early training has set him several levels above his peers. It hardly mattered that he was leagues behind in the academics of the school he enrolled into. Aside from the fact that the dean couldn’t possibly consider expelling the Young Lion’s son in fear of tarnishing the school’s reputation, Tsunayoshi’s plays were far too brilliant to be sacrificed for his exam scores.

In the duration of the teen’s active participation as the ace of the basketball team, the school has managed to achieve its highest recorded points. Although he stood a great deal shorter than his teammates, his presence was indomitable on the court. It’s because of this that whatever doubt they harbored toward the seemingly unimpressionable brunet was quickly discarded in the face of his ability to unite the team and bring out the very best in them.

Hence, it came as a surprise to all of them when one day, the brunet comes into the club room and hands in a resignation letter.

-

Tsunayoshi hears screaming. Distantly, he recognizes it as his father’s voice.

Iemitsu has always been loud, in his laughter and stories and bragging and celebration of his accomplishments, but it was never this kind of noise. Never so hateful and disappointed, even if he has often told Tsunayoshi that he could do better as a child.

“ _You’re an embarrassment to this family!_ ” Iemitsu shouts at him. His mother has her arms around one of his, a pained expression on her face as she desperately whispers for him to lower his voice and calm down. It goes ignored in the rush of his father’s anger. “I gave you everything you could possibly need. I hired a personal trainer for you. I got you into the best school for aspiring basketball players in the nation. I bought you the best equipment you could work with. I made sure your team got exposure for sponsorship. I did _everything_ I could, Tsuna, and _this_ is how you repay me?”

Tsunayoshi lifts a hand to wipe at the blood dripping from his split lip and pushes himself upright from the floor as best as he could on trembling arms. He will be sore tomorrow, he thinks, and he will have bruises in places that people would no doubt question.

But it’s alright. He’s had worse with Lal, and this is for the better.

“I never asked for it,” he manages to say. It’s shaky, barely any higher than a whisper, but it immediately silences Iemitsu. “I never asked for any of it.”

Tears leak from his eyes. His mother looks heartbroken.

Tsunayoshi wants to say he is sorry and he eventually will, but not right now. Not today. Not any time soon.

“I never wanted a personal trainer. I was fine with studying in a school that isn’t part of the top three. I didn’t ask for anything you gave me.” He’s shaking all over, his voice rising at the uncomprehending look on his father’s face because the man is so deluded, so self-centered he doesn’t _see_ how wanting the best for his son has robbed him of his freedom and happiness. Tsunayoshi never had any friends, only teammates who stuck around for formal pleasantries because he was the son of a celebrity and because of the recognition he brought to the team. “I never wanted to become a basketball player, Dad.”

Iemitsu flinches.

He looks at them. At his father who was rarely ever home, and at his mother who forced herself to be content with spending her hours alone.

“Do you know why I kept playing?” he asks. “Do you know why I never left the team even though I _despised_ basketball?”

Something torn crosses his father’s face, pale and scared, and bit by bit, he seems to realize that he had done something wrong.

Tsunayoshi would laugh if he could. Instead, he can only choke back a sob as the words he was never able to say finally spill from his tongue.

“I just wanted to make you proud,” he cries. 


	2. Chapter 2

The first time Tsunayoshi sees Iemitsu on television is when he is six years old.

He is wearing his team’s basketball uniform, the number of the ace boldly emblazoned on his front and back. Around his neck hung several medals, all of which gleamed gold under the camera’s flashes.

Tsunayoshi has seen more of them in his father’s office often enough, led by Lal Mirch who recounted his father’s accomplishments with begrudging admiration. They lined the walls and filled the drawers in their velvet boxes, trophies of various tournaments encased in glass proudly put on display. His mother took deliberate care to find time in her schedule to look after them and make sure they remained clean even if his father rarely came home.

 _“I heard that you plan on having your son continue your legacy as the ace of CEDEF, Iemitsu-san. Is this true?”_ the reporter asks.

On the screen, Iemitsu boisterously laughs.

 _“Yes,”_ he says without hesitation. _“I expect him to take after his papa when he grows up.”_

Tsunayoshi looks down at the basketball in his hands. It’s too big and too heavy for his age, evidenced by the gauze wrapped around his tiny fingers and the bruises on his skin, but it is a familiar weight after everything his father’s personal trainer has put him through.

 _But what if I don’t want to be like you?_ he asks. _What if I don’t want to be a basketball player?_

The interview fills the stifling silence of the room. Lal would get angry with him if he dares to ask, he thinks. She respected his father very much and she wanted Tsunayoshi to become one of the best basketball players of Japan just as much as his father did. His mother would be sad, too, if he told her he didn’t want to grow up to become like his dear papa.

He quietly turns off the television, puts away the ball in a corner with sore fingers, and returns to his room.

There is no use wondering, in the end. He must follow what Iemitsu wants for him if he wants to make him proud.

-

“Oh, you must be the Young Lion’s son! Your father often talks about you… I have high expectations of you, son.”

“Well, Tsunayoshi-kun, do you plan on becoming a pro basketball player just like your father?”

“Dame-Tsuna, mind if we came over? We heard you have a basketball court in your house and it’s got like, the latest equipment. You wouldn’t mind, would you?”

“Hey, I know people have probably asked this of you but… can you get your dad to sign this for me? I’ve been his biggest fan since I was in my _diapers_ , you know, and…”

Tsunayoshi grits his teeth, smiles, and bears it all in silence. If he passes the ball strong enough to sprain the wrists of his teammates or tilts the ring with the force of his dunk, they are none the wiser.

It’s okay. Everything is fine, he thinks, repeats, frantically screams over the echoes of their superficial compliments and lies. As long as he is able to keep playing his best, as long as he doesn’t make a fool out of himself in his father’s name, then it’s going to be okay.

Even if it really, really isn’t.

-

“It must be difficult,” Dino, a senior and member of the basketball team, says as he passes the ball to him.

Tsunayoshi easily takes the ball. “What do you mean, Dino-senpai?”

“Having your father get constantly brought up in conversations,” he says.

He laughs a little but it sounded forced to their ears.

“Well, Dad is an amazing basketball player. I can understand why they’d want to talk about him.” He looks at the teen with a smile that felt wrong on his face. “Why would it be difficult?”

Dino looks at him. “Because it’s always about him and never about _you_.”

Tsunayoshi carefully doesn’t flinch.

For a moment, he considers replying honestly. If there is anyone who would understand, it would be Dino. He is the heir to a sports company, someone who tried basketball under his father’s strong suggestion for its popularity. They treated him as they would with Tsunayoshi- words aimed to flatter, tone meant to convince, agendas hidden in their eyes.

For a moment, he allows himself to believe he could trust Dino.

But then he remembers his father’s voice through the opened door of his office with perfect clarity and finds himself looking away.

 _“It would be great if our sons could get along,”_ his father had said. _“In the future, it would make business much easier for both of our families.”_

He turns to face the hoop. Aims with a deadly calm. Makes the shot.

The _swish_ of the net as the ball goes through rings loud in the silence.

“It’s not like that at all,” he lies with a sincere-sounding laugh that surprises even him. “I’m sure they mean well.”

“O-oh,” the blond says. “Is that so.”

Tsunayoshi has always worked best under pressure. This wasn’t any different.

-

Some days, Tsunayoshi breathes a little easier. He slips a few real smiles during their practice, opens up just a little enough for them to see past the carefully crafted persona he has forged over the years, and talks to them beyond the impersonal conversations that revolved around their plays. Sometimes, he allows himself to trust that there is a little more to their relationship, allows himself to see the tentative friendship that peeks through in their limited interactions.

But most days- most days, Tsunayoshi _suffers_.

The squeak of rubber against polished floors, the dribble of the ball, the sound of passes and scores being made. The authoritative call of Dino as he directed the team on the court, Timoteo’s considering hum from the bench, his teammates’ excitable screams.

They grate at his ears and chafe at his skin. It rings in his head, lingers even after they have finished practice, and chases him in the quiet moments of his own practice into late hours. He wants to press his hands over his ears and _scream_ his throat raw to drown it. Wants nothing but to peel the skin from his fingertips from the texture of the ball in his hands and crumble on the floor of the court where everyone could see, his forehead pressed against the floor and fists clenched tight.

 _Are you proud of me?_ he wants to ask. To _cry._ Tsunayoshi is tired. He is so, so tired and he doesn’t want to do this anymore. He’s been doing his very best since the day he turned four and Lal arrived in front of their door, promising to make him into something he never wanted to be. He’s been doing his _goddamned best_ and Iemitsu never bothered to look twice, never bothered to praise him or his efforts.

“I’m sure you can do better, Tsuna,” he would say. “When I was your age, I was able to do much more. You should, too, since you’re my son.”

 _Would it hurt you to tell me I did great just once?_ he thinks, words a scorching brand on his tongue. They threaten to slip whenever he sees the man but he holds it back because Tsunayoshi has endured for years in silence.

“Yes, dad,” he would say instead and it grips his neck like barbed wires, hurts unbearably like a jagged rock has been forcefully lodged down his throat. “I will do better.”

But Tsunayoshi doesn’t know if he could.

-

He writes the resignation letter when he is fourteen.

He doesn’t give it to Timoteo the moment he finishes. He keeps it at the bottom of his drawer hidden in a page of a sports magazine for several months, untouched and kept as much of a secret as the bruises that had nothing to do with basketball practice under his clothes.

He isn’t sure, but he thinks his mother finds it because she looks at him with an expression he couldn’t discern over dinner the very same night.

“You know that Mama is lucky to have you, right, Tsu-kun?” she asks.

Tsunayoshi looks at her. At her thin wrists, the dark bags under her eyes, the strain of her smile.

The skin of her ring finger which has been rubbed raw, gold band nowhere in sight.

“Yes,” he says, and it hurts a different kind of way when he realizes he doesn’t know if he means it or not.

His mother only smiles at him like she understands.

-

“This whole school is fucking ridiculous,” a voice whom he recognized as Mochida’s says. Tsunayoshi fully intended to leave and make his way to the basketball court not too far from where the group of teens were sitting when his words catch his attention. “They’re nothing but a bunch of asskissers. We all have to work hard to stay here and keep our scholarships. We sweat our asses off balancing academics and extracurriculars and then we have someone like _Dame-Tsuna_ who never got a two-digit score on his exams and they fucking _make him stay._ ”

Mochida bursts into laughter, ugly and rotten and vindictive.

“Must be nice, having his daddy buy his way into things,” he says and Tsunayoshi flinches. “How much do you think Dino is being paid to be friendly with someone like him?”

“Well, now that you say it… hasn’t Cavallone been doing several collaborations with CEDEF for a new line of equipment recently?”

“It’s not just Cavallone, either. Everyone in the basketball team is receiving offers for sponsorships left and right. You think it’s a coincidence they’re wearing basketball shoes we normally can’t afford?”

Tsunayoshi grips the front of his clothes over his upset stomach and runs away before they could see him.

He shouldn’t be surprised. He expected this the moment he was introduced as the Young Lion’s son and not as Sawada Tsunayoshi.

That doesn’t make it hurt any less.

-

It is before an important tournament that he approaches Timoteo and hands him the white envelope with shaking fingers.

“I’m sorry, Timoteo-san,” he says. His voice cracks, his body trembles, and there’s a ringing in his ears that makes him want to hide from the man’s eyes because the man has been very kind to him. He is one of the few people who sees him for who he was rather than Iemitsu’s trophy child.

The man takes the envelope with an ease that belied his next words.

“This is incredibly selfish of you, Tsunayoshi-kun,” Timoteo tells him.

He lowers his eyes, heart twisting in his chest. He knows. He _knows_.

“This tournament means so much to your teammates. Dino has been working hard since this is his last year in the team. Couldn’t it wait?”

Could it? Tsunayoshi wonders. Could he do this, give a little more of himself and endure a little longer?

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to know.

“…I’m sorry,” he says again.

Timoteo smiles bitterly.

“There is no point in apologizing to me,” he says. “Your teammates were counting on you to help them realize their dreams to win the tournament. Dino was expecting so much from you.”

He places the envelope on the table between them and raises a hand. Tsunayoshi instinctively draws into himself, shoulders rising defensively out of habit.

Timoteo ruffles his hair.

“I’ve always been proud of you, Tsunayoshi-kun,” he says warmly.

A sob rips from his throat, and for the first time, Tsunayoshi allows himself to cry.

He never said it, never thought to even voice it, but Timoteo is the father he never had.

-

Iemitsu is furious enough to raise his hand against Tsunayoshi when the news reaches him.

An embarrassment, he calls him.

Tsunayoshi has been called worse by others but their opinion hadn’t meant as much as his father did.

“I just wanted to make you proud,” he says, and it’s like peeling a scabbing wound open. It’s freeing just as much as it tore at him to admit after years of silence.

His mother cries with him, and his father looks close to tears.

That day, Tsunayoshi leaves the house and doesn’t come back.

-

It is by chance that the posters for apartments he is looking at is beside an electronics store that had a variety of television screens on display.

It is by chance that it is airing one of what would become the most memorable games in volleyball.

 _“-and he scores another point!”_ the announcer says, nearly overwhelmed by the cheers of the crowd as a dark-haired man spikes the ball through the nation’s most formidable blockers. “ _The man lives up to his title of being the Strongest Spiker as he blasts through Vindice-“_

It is by chance that Tsunayoshi is there to watch it.

-

It isn’t by chance that he enrolls into Namimori High and joins the volleyball club.


End file.
